Vimor Handloom Foundation
The COVID-19 crisis has disrupted the lives of numerous weavers in India. The Vimor Handloom Foundation is reaching out and lending support to its extended weaver family who are in desperate need of help. Vimor has a long history of mentoring numerous weavers across the country. As a part of their fundraising initiative, the Foundation is putting together a list of distressed weavers in each area /village, and coordinating the disbursement of resources via the master weaver.
Fundraising Goals
The Foundation has adopted a three-pronged approach to provide the weavers with sustainable support channels:
Survival: by providing day-to-day rations so they have enough food to get by each day.
Security: to ensure that they have access to enough raw material like yarn and dyes to carry on with their work in these uncertain times.
Skill Upgradation: by continuing their work in this area to empower the weavers with a sustainable and dignified livelihood despite the unprecedented challenges of these times and the uncertainty of the future.
The foundation aims to raise INR 10 lakhs to cover the next three months. Any donations to the Vimor Handloom Foundation will contribute towards:
- Rations- Rice, pulses, oil and wheat
- Raw materials- Yarn, threads and fabric
- Design Intervention and training resources
Please visit https://vimorfoundation.org/ for more information
About the Foundation:
Vimor was started in 1974 by Mrs. Chimy Nanjappa and Pavithra Muddaya. Since its inception, Vimor has dedicated itself to reviving, innovating and documenting traditional handloom saree motifs and their techniques. It has preserved oral history by relying on and gaining from age-old stories told by veteran master weavers who are literally the knowledge banks of today.
In the past 45 years, Vimor has had tremendous success in training several weavers to produce traditional, marketable sarees. Weavers were given hand-holding support through mentorship, design intervention and colour aesthetics, financial credit assistance and also the strength, dignity and confidence to grow. As envisioned, he was thus able to move from being a weaver to a master weaver and produce more sarees, gradually becoming an entrepreneur in his own right, independent of Vimor.